Saturday, June 21, 2008

Car Repair 3

Charged the battery this morning for an hour or so and got it started enough to head to Les Schwab's for a new battery. I'm thinking it was my original battery so 10 years isn't too bad.

Brought it home and fanagled a test setup to test the current of the fuse circuit that seemed to be causing the trouble. Trouble is. . . now it seems to be working fine. I hate when this happens. I know something was bad and now that it's glitched back to normal I can't find it.

Anyway I'm going to assume it was the trunk release. Even when it was draining the battery I could still use the keyless to get in the drivers door. So what was wrong with the trunk release circuit. Couldn't be a wire short or burned out, that would've blown the fuse. The current matches the current used be the release solenoid. I can only assume the Remote Access Computer glitched its output signal to keep the trunk ON all the time or the relay for it got stuck ON.

I went ahead and bought a new relay, $20 at Napa. Sticky old relays are possible and replacing something gives me some satisfaction. Put it all back together and as a double-check disconnected the battery and checked its standby current.

As a bonus, all that time with the battery disconnected finally reset the "check engine" light.

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Reagan

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." -Reagan

Thatcher

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.